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The Russian-A(merican) Bomb

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MICHAEL I. SCHWARTZ is a recent graduate of Harvard College who concentrated in History and Science with a special emphasis on chemistry and United States foreign policy. Thisarticle, presented at the 1995 Forum on Undergraduate Studies and Theses, was completed in May 1994 for Professor Loren Graham in completion of the requirements of the courseHistory of Russian Science. Mr. Schwartz has been named a John Harvard Scholar, a Coca-Cola National Scholar, and a National Science Scholar. He plans to attend law school and isinterested in national security law and international law.The Russian-A(merican) Bomb: The Role of Espionage in theSoviet Atomic Bomb ProjectHistory of ScienceJ. Undergrad. Sci. 3: 103-108 (Summer 1996)MICHAEL I. SCHWARTZIntroductionThere was no “Russian” atomic bomb. There onlywas an American one, masterfully discovered bySoviet spies.”1This claim echoes a new theme in Russia regardingthe Soviet atomic bomb project that has arisen since thedemocratic revolution of the 1990s. The release of the KGB(Commissariat for State Security) documents regarding therole that espionage played in the Soviet atomic bomb projecthas raised new questions about one of the most remark-able and rapid scientific developments in history. Despiteboth the advanced state of Soviet nuclear physics in theyears leading up to World War II and reported scientificachievements of the actual Soviet atomic bomb project,strong evidence will be provided that suggests that the So-viets did not truly develop their own atomic bomb in 1949,but rather, through Soviet spies’ heroic acts of espionage,copied the plutonium bomb devised by the Manhattan Projectand detonated at Nagasaki in 1945.Alhough the claim that the Soviets copied the Ameri-can atomic bomb is not unique, it is based on newly sur-faced KGB information that calls its validity into question.The KGB is releasing substantial information regarding itsrole in the Soviet atomic project at a precarious time in itsexistence. With the end of the Cold War, the KGB is seek-ing glory at a point in history when its future is in question.2Nonetheless, scientific and intelligence experts who haveseen both the material released by the KGB and other still-secret information have remarked that “even Edward Tellerand Andrei Sakharov could not have built a bomb on thatinformation.”3 Historian Paul Josephson remarked that bythe eve of the Nazi invasion, the Soviets could not only boastof scientists who contributed significantly to the worldwidegrowth of nuclear physics, but had laid the foundation forwork on an atomic bomb.4 Still, a war-torn nation was ableto develop an atomic bomb in only four years, the sameamount of time it took the United States, Canada, and GreatBritain, with the “massive industrial might and accumulatedefficiency of duPont, General Electric, Tennessee Eastman,and Bell Systems,”5 research and development expenditurestotaling $2 billion,6 and nearly the entire scientific commu-nity mobilized in the Manhattan Project, to develop theirbomb.In order to assess the validity of the KGB’s claim, it isnecessary to look at the three primary factors of the Sovietatomic bomb project. First, it is necessary to analyze thestate of physics in the Soviet Union prior to World War IIand the 1941 Nazi invasion in order to investigate whetherthe Soviet Union actually had the scientific capacity to em-bark on an atomic bomb project during World War II. Sec-ond, the progress and achievements of the Soviet bombphysicists and project coordinators ought to be analyzed soas to achieve an understanding of the project itself, and giventhe circumstances and problems of the project, just howsuccessful those scientists could have been. Third and fi-nally, the role that espionage played will be analyzed, in-vestigating the various pieces of information handed overby Soviet spies and its overall usefulness and contributionto the bomb project.Soviet Nuclear Physics—Pre-World War IIAs aforementioned, Paul Josephson believes that bythe eve of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Soviet sci-entists had the technical capability to embark upon an atom-ics weapons program. He cites the significant contributionsmade by Soviet physicists to the growing international studyof the nucleus, including the 1932 splitting of the lithium atomby proton bombardment,7 Igor Kurchatov’s 1935 discoveryof the isomerism of artificially radioactive atoms, and thefact that L. D. Landau, Kirill Sinelnikov, and A. I. Leipunskiiwere the first scientists in the world to repeat Cockcroft andWalton’s experimental splitting of the atom by artificialmeans.8 Additionally, Semenov established the conditionsnecessary for the nuclear fission chain reaction between1939 and 1941, work for which he would later receive the1956 Nobel Prize in physics.9 The advanced state is evi-denced in hindsight by the numerous Soviet physicists whoreceived Nobel Prizes for their work in nuclear physics dur-ing the 1930s. This list included Semenov in 1956, P. A.Cherenkov, I. E. Tamm, and I. M. Frank awarded in 1959 fortheir work on the Cherenkov effect studied between 1934and 1937, and Kapitsa, awarded in 1978, and Landau,awarded in 1962, for their work in the late 1930s and early1940s on superfluidity.10And, by World War II, Soviet physicists understood thatnuclear fission had military significance as it could be usedto develop and extraordinarily powerful bomb. Igor Tammexplained this realization to some of his students in 1939when he discussed fission, saying, “Do you know what thisnew discovery [fission] means? It means a bomb can bebuilt that will destroy a city out to a radius of maybe 10 kilo-meters.”11 By June 1940, a specific Uranium Commissionhad been developed, which set out to locate uranium de-posits, develop a method for the production of heavy water,provide for the rapid construction of cyclotrons, study iso-tope separation, and to measure nuclear constants, all inthe interests of harnessing the energy of the nucleus.12Yet, by World War II, the Soviets only had the theoreti-cal understanding necessary to embark on an atomic bombproject. Historian David Holloway points out that “Sovietphysicists did not lag behind their American, British, or Ger-man counterparts in their thinking about nuclear fission (em-phasis added).”13 But the Soviet scientists lacked the West-ern scientists’ vision of its practical application to a bomb.Khoplin considered uranium energy to be “a


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